Observers: Scandal won't cost Iowa caucus position

But two say political leaders should make efforts to clean up the caucuses' image.

Oct. 6, 2013

Kent Sorenson resigned from the Senate.

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An Iowa caucuses scandal that led to the resignation of a state senator last week bolsters critics of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status, but likely won’t dislodge the state from its pre-eminent place in presidential politics.

That’s the verdict of longtime caucus observers and national political operatives polled last week after Sen. Kent Sorenson, R-Milo, vacated his seat in the wake of a damning report on his activities during the 2012 caucus campaign.

“There’s plenty of states and plenty of operatives around the country that are jealous of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status, and so this gives them fodder for their efforts,” said Doug Gross, a longtime Republican strategist in Iowa. “At the end of the day, though, I don’t think they’re going to be successful.”

David Yepsen, a former Des Moines Register columnist who’s now director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, was more blunt: “I think it does pose a risk to the caucuses,” he said of the Sorenson affair. “When you have something like this happen, you’re just giving Iowa’s enemies more ammunition.”

But Yepsen, too, said the incident likely won’t present a serious challenge to Iowa’s place on the nominating calendar because of the years of political inertia supporting the status quo: It’s been first in the nation since the 1970s, and there’s no agreement on any other way to do it.

The latest incident peaked last week with the release of a report compiled by a special investigator for the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee, which found “probable cause” that Sorenson violated legislative rules by accepting payment from a political action committee associated with U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign and may have committed a felony when he denied taking such payment.

But Bill Burton, a former aide to U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin who has since become one of the top Democratic campaign operatives in the country, said the Sorenson situation looked to him like an isolated incident — “a few bad apples, not a big, bad orchard.”

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“It seems like a couple of bad actors and not anything that you could consider systemic to the caucuses,” he said. “In general, the Iowa caucuses are very well run by both parties, and the process is an important and clean one.”

That said, though, Gross and Yepsen agreed that Iowa’s political leaders must make efforts to clean up the caucuses’ image and restore their credibility.

“The people in Iowa who want to keep the caucuses around have to not be seen as shaking down people,” Yepsen said. “When stuff like this happens, it just taints the whole process and makes it that much more difficult to stay first.”

Yepsen noted the controversy over the 2012 Republican results — when Mitt Romney was initially declared the winner, only to be overtaken in the final count by Rick Santorum — as another handhold for critics.

Gross added that the caucuses’ viability depended also on opening access and boosting participation. Given the complexity of the caucus process and the events’ relatively low turnout, it’s easier in Iowa for a well-organized minority to sway the results. That can make some candidates less likely to participate and delegitimize the results in the eyes of the media and broader public.

“It’d be a worthwhile discussion to try to make certain that the caucuses cannot be hijacked by a relatively small group of extremists,” Gross said. “That harms the caucuses as well.”